Before a manufacturer ships a computer network-related product to a customer, it is important to test the product under conditions approximately identical to the conditions under which the product will operate at the customer's site, commonly referred to as a production or “live” network.
The live network may contain sensitive or mission-critical data and operations; therefore, it is desirable to perform any troubleshooting, performance testing, or other analysis off-line from the live network and, preferably, on a test network that replicates as close as possible the live network. However, recreating the environment of the live network at a separate test network posses difficulties for the customer and vendors who engage in performance testing of network-related products.
One problem faced by customers and vendors attempting to replicate a live network with a separate test network is the high-degree of site knowledge needed to understand the complexities of the live network environment. A customer's live network environment often evolves over time to satisfy new demands that can result in a myriad of on-going changes to equipment in the live network. For instance, it is common for a production network to receive new and/or updated network equipment to upgrade a level of available network bandwidth to enterprise services, for example. Similarly, additional and different storage systems are commonly added to live networks to meet the increasing demands for data storage. Each piece of equipment within the live network may have a different operating system, network demand requirement, and specialized application unavailable to third-party vendors. Therefore, understanding and navigating the complexities of the live network environment is a difficult problem faced by customers and vendors seeking to replicate that environment to a test network.
Another problem faced when replicating a live network is the high cost of purchasing test equipment identical to equipment at the live network. Even if only key pieces of equipment of the live network are purchased, the cost to the customer and/or vendor can exceed budget and hinder the ability to produce a profit.
An additional challenge is security. A live network may carry mission-critical and/or confidential information. Corporations often use their live networks to share private information, trade secrets, and financial information throughout the corporation while shielding the release of sensitive information to the public and/or other corporations and agencies. Sensitive information may be collected as part of the replication of a live network to a separate test network; however, the test network is often operated by a third-party vendor who may not have the security implementations necessary to protect the sensitive data from being released. Therefore, some entities may find it unreasonable to allow replication of their network environment, even at the expense of the live network's efficiency and performance.
Previous attempts to overcome the above issues have failed to provide a method or a system to accurately and securely capture real-time (inline) workloads that use a variety of communication protocols. The prior art is limited to replaying workloads using a single protocol type, such as Network Filing System (NFS), and fails to focus on protecting data security.
Therefore, the problem of an inability to accurately, economically, and securely recreate a live network environment hinders network operators from realizing increased efficiency of operation, which adversely affects users accessing services delivered by the live network.